RFC 6473

vCard KIND:application

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) P. Saint-Andre
Request for Comments: 6473 Cisco
Category: Standards Track December 2011
ISSN: 2070-1721
vCard KIND:application
Abstract
This document defines a value of "application" for the vCard KIND
property so that vCards can be used to represent software
applications.
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6473.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................22. Meaning .........................................................23. Example .........................................................44. IANA Considerations .............................................45. Security Considerations .........................................46. Acknowledgements ................................................57. References ......................................................57.1. Normative References .......................................57.2. Informative References .....................................51. Introduction
Version 4 of the vCard specification [RFC6350] defines a new KIND
property to specify the type of entity that a vCard represents.
During its work on the base vCard4 specification, the VCARDDAV
Working Group defined values of "individual", "organization",
"group", and "location" for the KIND property. The working group
considered but then removed a value of "thing" to represent any type
of physical entity, machine, software application, etc., with the
expectation that such a value might be defined in a vCard extension.
This document does not define a generic "thing" value but instead
defines a more narrow "application" value so that vCards can be used
to represent software applications.
2. Meaning
When the KIND property has a value of "application", the vCard
represents a software application such as a server, an online service
(e.g., a chat room), or an automated software bot. More formally, an
"application" is functionally equivalent to the 'applicationProcess'
object class used in the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
[RFC4519] as derived from the Open Systems Interconnection model
[X.521] [X.200]. As one example of the "application" KIND, vCards
are currently used in the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol
[RFC6120] to represent instant messaging servers that are deployed on
the network.
The properties included in an application's vCard apply to one of the
following:
o The application itself (e.g., the FN property might represent the
friendly name of an application service, the URL property might
represent a website that contains further information about the
service, and the ADR, GEO, and TZ properties might represent the
physical address, geographical location, and time zone of the
machine where the service is hosted).

o An organization or person that makes the application available on
the network (e.g., the LOGO property might represent the corporate
logo of a service provider).
o A person or role that maintains the application (e.g., the TEL,
EMAIL, and IMPP properties might represent ways to contact a
server administrator).
When a property represents some aspect of the application itself, it
makes no sense to include the "work" and "home" values of the TYPE
parameter since software applications do not have work places and
personal lives (see the definition of the TYPE parameter in Section
5.6 of [RFC6350]). When a property represents information about an
individual associated with the application (e.g., an individual
service administrator as opposed to a generic service administrator
role or an associated organization), inclusion of the "work" and
"home" values can be appropriate.
The following base properties make sense for vCards that represent
software applications (this list is not exhaustive, and other
properties might be applicable as well):
o ADR
o EMAIL
o FN
o GEO
o IMPP
o KEY
o KIND
o LANG
o LOGO
o NOTE
o ORG
o PHOTO
o REV
o SOURCE
o TEL
o TZ
o URL
Although it might be desirable to define a more fine-grained taxonomy
of applications (e.g., a KIND of "application" with a subtype of
"server" or "IM server"), such a taxonomy is out of the scope of this
document.

3. Example
The following example of an Extensible Messaging and Presence
Protocol (XMPP) server is borrowed from [XEP-0292]. The XML
representation of the vCard is described in [RFC6351], which allows
for the use of the new "application" value using the "iana-token"
production defined in [RFC6350].
<vcard xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:vcard-4.0">
<fn><text>jabber.org IM service</text></fn>
<url><uri>http://www.jabber.org/</uri></url>
<lang>
<parameters><pref><integer>1</integer></pref></parameters>
<language-tag>en</language-tag>
</lang>
<email><text>xmpp@jabber.org</text></email>
<impp><uri>xmpp:jabber.org</uri></impp>
<logo><uri>http://www.jabber.org/images/logo.png</uri></logo>
<geo><uri>geo:42.25,-91.05</uri></geo>
<tz><text>America/Chicago</text></tz>
<source><uri>xmpp:jabber.org?vcard</uri></source>
<rev><timestamp>19990104T122100Z</timestamp></rev>
<kind><text>application</text></kind>
</vcard>
4. IANA Considerations
IANA has added "application" to the registry of property values for
vCard4. In conformance with Section 10.2.6 of [RFC6350], the
registration is as follows, where the reference is to RFC 6473.
Value: application
Purpose: The entity represented by the vCard is a software
application (e.g., a server, an online service such as a chat
room, or an automated software bot).
Conformance: This value can be used with the KIND property.
Example: See Section 3 of RFC 6473.
5. Security Considerations
Use of vCards to represent software applications is not envisioned to
introduce security considerations beyond those specified for vCards
in general as described in [RFC6350].